University Times

John C. Camillus Donald R. Beall Professor of Strategic Management, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business.

Served on Senate Council (1981-84). During the 1980s, U.S. businesses showed universities how not to respond to rapid change and an unpredictable environment, according to Camillus, whose academic specialty is strategic planning.

"Downsizing, re-engineering and unrestrained cost-cutting have more often than not resulted in a vicious circle of falling morale, greater distrust and infighting, fewer resources and diminishing capabilities," Camillus wrote in his position statement as a candidate. "Organizations have to move out of a åzero-sum game' mentality where some in the organization have to lose for others to åwin.'" According to Camillus, few organizations are better equipped to shape their futures than Pitt and its fellow major research universities. He cited the Learning Research and Development Center, the Univer-sity's growing bioengineering activities and last year's creation of the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education as "examples of how we can increase our resources and achieve internationally recognized excellence" by creating synergies across disciplines, "taking calculated, entrepreneurial risks" and "employing flexible matrix structures," among other actions.

"We on the faculty can, through the existing governance structure, either promote a tenacious grip on the status quo or challenge the administration, staff and students to partner with us in creating the context and organizational mechanisms that will tap our creativity and unleash our potential," Camillus wrote. "I would value an opportunityato help fashion the processes that will develop the culture and generate the resources needed to achieve the levels of quality and excellence to which we all aspire.